July 13, 2025
Pentecost 5/Proper 10, Year C
The Rev. Dr. Elaine Ellis Thomas
St. John’s Episcopal Church
Essex, CT
Amos 7:7-17, Pslam 82, Colossians 1:1-14, Luke 10:25-37
The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus is best remembered for saying that no one steps in the same river twice because it is never the same river and we are never quite the same person. I would say that the same thing is true of scripture, at least in our understanding of it as we read its stories through the lens of a changing world and our own life experiences. I am baffled by the fundamentalists who are fond of saying “the bible says it, I believe it, and that settles it,” because the bible doesn’t speak with one voice. There are discrepancies and contradictions and things we outright reject like slavery which the bible promotes. Yes, I believe the bible to be the Word of God, and I take it seriously enough to wrestle with what it says and how I am to proclaim that when I climb into this pulpit each week.
Take this story we know as the Good Samaritan. I don’t know how many times I have preached on it – at least every three years in the lectionary cycle – and I could no more preach the same sermon I preached three or six or nine years ago than I could shave those years off my age. I’m not the same person. The world is not the same place. We know more about the context in which this story was written. We can’t dip our toe into it in quite the same way.
This is particularly challenging with those stories that are so familiar to us that they have a name – The Prodigal Son, The Sheep and the Goats, The Pharisee and the Tax Collector, and this morning’s parable of the Good Samaritan. Through the years, the identities of the characters have been changed by preachers to provide the most provocative telling because it’s supposed a provocative story. The one who stopped to help might have been a member of Al Qaeda post-September 11th, or a white supremacist post-summer of 2017. Think of the person you consider to be the most despicable outsider you can imagine. That’s the Good Samaritan. And those who pass by the injured person? Who are the most upstanding people you know – your priest? Your parents? Your physician or your teacher? We can twist ourselves into knots trying to find ourselves in this parable, but like the lawyer who challenged Jesus in order to justify himself, we want to be the hero. We want to be the helper, not those people who cross to the other side of the street.
The real problem with all of this is that we are all just the person lying in that ditch, but we don’t even realize it.
Oh, no, we live in the 21st century United States of America. We are strong and independent. We can take care of ourselves. If we have need of anything, we have the resources to acquire it. We are the ones who do the caretaking of others. We don’t need to rely on someone else to take care of us.
Until we do. Until the diagnosis comes, or the layoff happens, or disaster strikes, or depression takes us in its claws. As the Lenten Collect goes, “…we have no power in ourselves to help ourselves” (BCP 218).
And that’s when Jesus shows up, hoists us over his shoulders like a wayward sheep, pays the cost of our salvation, and promises that there is more where that came from.
We don’t understand just how much we need Jesus to bind our wounds because we have a hard enough time admitting that we have wounds.
And I am really glad that this reading falls on a day when we are welcoming a baby into the household of God through the sacrament of baptism. There’s a reason that Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 18:3), because little Maddie and her sister Izzy are under no delusions about being self-sufficient, about being able to take care of themselves. If they are hungry, the people around them will know about it. If they are sick or hurt, they will cry for help. When was the last time any of us did that?
When the lawyer tries to trick Jesus with the question, “But, who is my neighbor?,” Jesus tells him it’s the one who showed mercy. It’s the one who does what Jesus does, pulling us out of the hole life has tossed us into or the hole we’ve dug for ourselves. And if we are the hands and feet of Christ in this place, we support one another, show up for one another, we serve others as we also are served. We open ourselves to the love and care that our neighbors can offer us. And we let the little children like Maddy and Izzy lead the way.